THE Emergency Operations Center (EOC) of Mandaue City will reactivate the barangay isolation centers as staging facilities for emergency patients waiting for hospitals to accommodate them.
This was discussed during the meeting of all the team heads of the EOC to address the increase of Covid-19 cases, on Aug. 3, 2021.
Lawyer Julius Caesar Entise, the head of the EOC, said there is a need to reactivate the barangay isolation centers as they noticed hospital beds are getting full.
He said as per the EOC’s observation, there are patients whom hospitals turn down due to full occupancy.
In a separate interview, Jake Seno, chief of the Mandaue City Hospital, confirmed that of the 25 patients admitted in their hospital, 18 are positive for Covid-19.
Seno said ideally, they would allocate only 10 beds for Covid-19 patients in their hospital.
There are also patients at the Mandaue City Hospital who are waiting for their referral. However, as of press time, Seno said they have completely referred the patients to tertiary hospitals.
The Mandaue City Hospital is still classified as an infirmary and does not have the capacity to house moderate to severe cases of Covid-19, said Seno.
With this, Entise said all the team heads have agreed that it is necessary to open barangay isolation facilities to prevent people from queuing at the local hospitals while waiting for the referral to get approved.
Entise said in the afternoon of Aug. 3, they started inspecting barangay isolation facilities that they will put up in barangays Cubacub, Canduman, Casuntingan, Subangdaku and others.
“Preferably we will use public schools because it will not only accommodate confirmed positive cases but will also cater to persons under monitoring,” said Entise.
According to Entise, they noticed that most of the patients brought to the hospitals experienced difficulty of breathing.
He said the Mandaue City Hospital has 50 oxygen tanks but the consumption of oxygen is much faster.
“If the patient has a very low oxygen saturation, he could use up to 15 liters. If not, the patient could use only five to 10 liters of oxygen,” said Entise.
Entise said they immediately purchased 100 oxygen tanks as they anticipate a rise in Covid-19 cases.
He said these oxygen tanks will also be placed in the barangay isolation facilities.
As of Aug. 2, the Department of Health Central Visayas (DOH 7) reported that Mandaue City has a total of 1,059 active Covid-19 cases.
In the July 2 report of the DOH 7, Mandaue City had only 278 Covid-19 cases then.
Entise did not confirm that the reason for the rise in cases is the Delta variant but he said they have to assume that it is the Delta variant as it is the best way to handle the current crisis. (KFD)